Can You Tackle An England Women’s
Rugby Fitness Session?

Rugby players need to be powerful, speedy and fit. Try one of their fitness sessions and see if you could take them on

So the other week, I got to meet World-Cup winning England Rugby legend Natasha Hunt. Who, may I say, is lovely – probably not so lovely on the pitch but lovely off it.

To give us an insight into how the England women pros train, she put me and a journo from get The Gloss through one of the team’s regular fitness sessions (luckily she get called away for photos so we didn’t have to do it all!). Rugby involves a lot of sprinting up and down the pitch – so the players need to practice their bursts of speed. I also need to practice my speed, I am pants at sprinting.

womens rugby

Can you tell we have no idea what we’re doing?

See if you can do this session without being sick in your mouth. If it’s a bit tough allow yourself some sneaky longer rests, increase the time allowances or cut the session in half.

Perform a dynamic warm up such as jogging, knee raises, heel flicks and skips to warm up your muscles before you start.

Set 1

Mark out 50m and perform the following number of sprints with a 1-minute rolling clock. The time you have left when you have completed the allotted sprints is your rest time. Eg, if you do 4 x 50m in 50 secs, you have 10 secs rest before you go on to 3 x 50m and so on.

4 x 50m sprints

3 x 50m sprints

2 x 50m sprints

1 x 50m sprints

2 min break

women running

Set 2

On your 50m track, build up your sprints and decrease them again to practice putting in bursts of speed and power.

Sprint 10m, jog 40m

Sprint 20m, jog 30m

Sprint 30m, jog 20m

Sprint 40m, jog 10m

Sprint 50m

Sprint 40m, jog 10m

Sprint 30m, jog 20m

Sprint 20m, jog 30m

Sprint 10m, jog 40m

2 min break

girls stretching

These stretches were very welcome

Set 3

This one’s a killer, perform these sprints with a two-minute rolling clock.

8 x 50m sprint

6 x 50m sprint

4 x 50m sprint

2 x 50m sprint

Cool down by curling into a ball and rocking gently on the side of the track. At this point it is ok to cry. Oh, and you should probs do some stretches.

We met Natasha at the launch of Coca-Cola’s Rugby World Cup 2015 sponsorship campaign, with one million rugby balls being given away to encourage the nation to get active.

“Since our Rugby World Cup win last year it’s been great to see so many more women taking an interest in rugby,” says Natasha, “but I’d love to see more get involved with the sport. I hope Coca-Cola’s campaign inspires women and girls all over the country to pick up a ball and give it a try.”

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